02 June 2014

Starr Whitehouse is thrilled to be the landscape architects on the BIG team’s winning proposal for HUD’s Rebuild By Design competition. The team’s winning entry, dubbed “The Big U,” was awarded $335 million for the implementation of a series of berms to protect the Lower East Side while enhancing the physical, social, and economic resiliency of East River Park and the surrounding neighborhood in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Starr Whitehouse was instrumental in developing an integrated landscape design for Lower Manhattan, weaving together ecological considerations, community needs, urban design, and resiliency measures. As leaders of the team’s outreach efforts, Starr Whitehouse assembled many of the key stakeholders in the Big U and planned a series of four community workshops that put design and ideation techniques normally reserved for the studio into the hands of over 150 community members which were critical for building support for the project and creating a responsive design proposal.